Spanish Flu was 100 years ago, so one can be forgiven for tending to forget about them. it may be many decades before there is a repeat of anything as bad as covid
While the world is being ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic, modeling taking several factors in to account shows that the next pandemic could be much closer than we think. Thorough preparedness for timely action and financing for those mitigation strategies are key to ensuring we do not have a repeat of the current pandemic (3). The future is therefore, demands strong collaborations of countries and international organizations in defending the upcoming pandemics
The global pandemics are getting more frequent and severe
Evidence shows that deadly pandemics have been happening more often in recent decades 1,2 . As shown in Figure 1, 5 out of 12 deadly pandemics occurred in the 20th century and the other 2 in the 21st century. The last four pandemics occurred almost every 15 years on average. It seems that the occurrence of pandemics getting more frequent over time. It warns us that deadly pandemics are likely to keep happening, spread faster, and kill more people than Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) soon if we do not take appropriate preemptive global action to protect natural environments. Such pandemics can be a dangerous threat to the world economy and long-lasting harm to social and cultural life.
